Local DREAMer discusses her life with and without the DACA Program at Quentin Church

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Agustina Drot de Gourville, a 28-year-old legal assistant at a Lancaster law firm, former preschool teacher and DACA recipient. Drot de Gourville came to the United States from Argentina with her parents at the age of 10.(Photo: Submitted via invisibleamericans.tumblr)

Agustina Drot de Gourville, who was brought to the United States from Argentina at the age of 10, has found herself in limbo with the state of flux the DACA Program is in.

“This is my home. This is what I’m used to,” Drot de Gourville, a 28-year-old legal assistant at a Lancaster law firm and former preschool teacher, said. “For children it’s much easier to assimilate to a different culture and a different language, but now that I’m an adult going back to Argentina would definitely be more of a culture shock than when I first came here.”

Drot de Gourville was one of three local undocumented immigrants participating in an informational panel discussion hosted by Quentin United Church of Christ regarding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program. Andres Vazquez-Lopez, 22, from Mexico, now a resident of Annville, was another participant along with an Egyptian woman who declined to be identified in this story.

The panel discussion was part of an outreach program put together by Church World Services, a Lancaster-based non-profit organization that works “hand-in-hand with caring churches, organizations and individuals to provide help and homes to refugees, and work to build a community in the U.S. for uprooted people so that they can fashion a better future,” according to the organization’s website.

Drot de Gourville and her three younger sisters came to the United States on a tourist visa with their parents, who thought they could adjust the status of their visa from tourist to resident after they arrived in New York.

“They were working through the church, and they thought they would be able to apply for some sort of residency, but there is no way unless someone petitions for you,” Drot de Gourville said. “By the time they discovered that, our tourist visa had already expired.”

As they sought legal avenues for gaining citizenship, and while her parents worked for a church ministry in New York, the years went by and Drot de Gourville and her sisters found themselves growing up undocumented in their adopted country.

“I was in fifth grade. I didn’t know what was happening. I was just trying to adapt to a new culture and learn a new language along with all the things that come with being a pre-teen and teenager,” she said.

She realized she was undocumented when she found out at the age of 16 that she couldn’t get a driver’s license because she did not have a social security number.

“It was hard because I felt like I had to hide who I truly was – I couldn’t really tell anyone,” Drot de Gourville said. “I felt ashamed.”

Drot de Gourville has been paying taxes even before the advent of the DACA Program.

"Every single immigrant can pay taxes because even if you don’t have a social security number you can go to the IRS and get a taxpayer identification number," she said. "Most immigrants pay their taxes."

To become a legal resident, she would need an immediate relative who is already a citizen to petition for her, but she had no relatives in the country beside her parents and sisters who came with her on the same tourist visa.

While two of her sisters have met and married U.S. citizens and are in the process of gaining citizenship through their spouses, Drot de Gourville said she hasn’t found the right person yet.

“A lot of people do feel pressured to marry a legal resident, but that’s a very personal decision and that’s just not who I am,” she said.

Her sisters could petition for Drot de Gourville, but only after they’ve been citizens for more than 10 years, she said.

“A lot of people think, ‘You’ve been here for 17 years why don’t you just get online and apply for citizenship?’ I can’t,” Drot de Gourville said. “I can go onto the website and apply, but I’m going to be denied because there needs to be someone petitioning for you.”

That changed in 2012 when President Barack Obama started the DACA Program. The program allowed Drot de Gourville to apply for a social security number which resulted in a work permit and a driver’s license. She was 21 at the time.

“That’s when I felt like I was finally free even though it’s a temporary protection because I have to renew it every two years,” she said. “I was finally able to do normal things that any regular citizen can do like apply for jobs, drive and not be scared of not having any documents.”

Certain requirements have to be met in order to apply for DACA, she said, such as having to be in the country before reaching her 16th birthday; having a high school diploma, GED or be enrolled in college; and having to pass rigorous background checks.

“You can’t have a criminal record, and you have to pay a $500 fee every time you apply, which you do every two years,” Drot de Gourville said. “Every two years I have to pay $500, get my background check, get my fingerprints taken and fill out a five-page application with all my information for address history, employment history – they want to know everything about me.”

That information is then sent to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Then there is a three to five month waiting period for approval, according to Drot de Gourville.

“As I’m waiting, I’m thinking will they accept it or not because some applications are denied if they don’t like what you submit,” she said. “Mine were always approved, thankfully.”

After President Donald Trump announced in September that he would end the Obama-era program, which was protecting nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation, Drot de Gourville was afraid for her future.

She and her fellow DACA recipients were in a state of panic, because they would be exposed to deportation if they lost their DACA protections, and would lose the work permits that came with DACA, according to a Feb. 26 USA Today story.

A banner hanging inside the Quentin United Church of Christ, 11 E. Main St., Quentin, where an informational panel discussion about the initial implementation and recent rescinding of the DACA program occurred Sunday, April 22, 2018. Three local undocumented immigrants and legal counsel from Church World Services, a Lancaster-based immigration and refugee organization, participated in the event.(Photo: Merriell Moyer)

Employers were starting to prepare to lay off DACA enrollees, and many participants in the program were unsure whether they would be able to remain in colleges and universities, or continue receiving grants and loans that helped them afford those schools.

President Trump set the official termination date as March 5, giving Congress six months to find a legislative solution. However, by refusing to hear a California case, the Supreme Court ensured that DACA will survive through the fall, giving DACA enrollees a temporary reprieve from deportation and Congress more time to craft a permanent solution for them.

Without the privileges the DACA program allows – such as a driver’s license – Drot de Gourville and others like her would be left open to the possibility of being jailed and eventually deported.

“You’re driving because you have to go to work and get groceries – we live in a place where there really isn’t public transportation and things are miles away from your house – so you get stopped by a local police officer and they see you don’t have a driver’s license and they call Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” she said.

An undocumented immigrant would then likely find themselves in York County Prison, which has been operating as a detention center for undocumented immigrants since the early 1990s.

“Since I’m working for an immigration lawyer we get a lot of calls from family members whose husband or wife or child is detained at York County Prison because they were stopped by police and they are now in deportation proceedings because of that,” Drot de Gourville said.

During the panel discussion, a member of the audience asked Drot de Gourville if she was angry with the Trump Administration for not immediately renewing DACA and insuring her future in the United States.

“I feel like I’m not an angry person. I’m a Christian and I do believe that God has a plan and a purpose for everything, she said. “He has brought me this far and I believe that He’s not just going to throw me to the curb.”